Last month, a team of engineering students at John Hopkins
University won the 2012 Odebrecht Award for Sustainable Development for a
unique green design that could help prevent the deforestation associated with
paper waste.

The students won the $15,000 prize for taking a traditional
form of paper-making often used in remote villages in Korea and developing an
inexpensive process that can be used to produce large quantities of paper.
Their technique uses by-products from agriculture, such as the husks that are
removed when grains are processed into flour.

The team created the deign for a machine that grinds these
by-products into a powder, which becomes mixed with water. The resulting
mixture is then boiled to create a pulp. Once complete, the pulp is formed into
sheets and dried on racks. This low-tech way of making paper would allow impoverished
communities throughout the third world to produce paper that can be used in
businesses and schools in large batches for a very low cost.

Since the process relies on sustainable agricultural
by-products rather than paper and requires no electricity, the process and
resulting paper are much greener than traditional paper. The students, Sangkyun
Cho, Jay Hyug Choi and Victor Hyun Oh, are planning to use the $15,000 prize to
build the first prototype of their design.

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